BELEAGUERED AMERICANS STARTING TO FIGHT BACK

For those who are angry at the slow but steady erosion of their constitutionally protected rights at the hands of the politically correct thought police commanding so many of America's institutions, take heart. The politically incorrect are fighting back.

Last October at the University of California at Riverside, a fraternity was about to be punished for its "insensitivity." Its crime? Members of the fraternity were seen wearing T-shirts depicting a Mexican watching a sunset with a bottle of beer in his hand. When radical groups on campus protested, the administration ordered the fraternity chapter dissolved for three years.

It wasn't an uncommon punishment for similar crimes of so-called insensitivity on campuses throughout the country. But this time the fraternity members fought back.

The fraternity contacted a small, fledgling public service law firm dedicated to challenging such stifling of free speech. The Individual Rights Foundation sued the university and won. The punishment was dropped, and as part of the settlement, two of the college administrators were required to undergo First Amendment sensitivity training.

Since the Riverside fraternity case, the IRF has been inundated with requests for help in similar cases. In one case, a high school student was expelled after using the word "feminazi" in a campaign speech for student body vice president, which offended some female faculty members.

IRF recently won a case in which Wake Forest University tried to punish the conservative campus newspaper for publishing an expose of Maya Angelou, who had been appointed "Professor for Life" at Wake Forest. The student journalists printed that Angelou received an annual salary of more than $100,000, while teaching no classes. She had no other responsibilities at the university, and her office address turned out to be a storage closet. The university tried to punish the newspaper for printing the truth about Angelou's employment at Wake Forest, but backed down when the IRF threatened a lawsuit.

The IRF isn't only working on college campuses. The group challenges all types of attacks on individual rights in the name of group rights.

Others are joining the fight. Each year the Red Mass has been celebrated at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where God's blessing and guidance is sought for those who make and interpret laws. When the Mass was celebrated in October, six Supreme Court justices and Attorney General Janet Reno were among the 1,000 people in attendance. Bishop Edward Egan urged the jurists to help rid the country of political correctness which, he said, muzzles the voices of those who oppose abortion and support religious education.

A few years ago, the Red Mass message and the successful work of the IRF would be difficult to imagine. But Americans have grown weary of the incessant attacks on individual freedom by entrenched radicals who run roughshod over those who disagree with the prevailing liberal culture. That their attacks are being countered bodes well for the preservation of freedoms in this, the freest and most prosperous nation in the world.